In Defense of Zionism

The often reviled ideology that gave rise to Israel has been an astonishing historical success.

A Jewish State: See some key moments in the history of Zionism and Israel Robert Capa/ICP/Magnum Photos

They come from every corner of the country—investment bankers, farmers, computer geeks, jazz drummers, botany professors, car mechanics—leaving their jobs and their families. They put on uniforms that are invariably too tight or too baggy, sign out their gear and guns. Then, scrambling onto military vehicles, 70,000 reservists—women and men—join the young conscripts of what is proportionally the world's largest citizen army. They all know that some of them will return maimed or not at all. And yet, without hesitation or (for the most part) complaint, proudly responding to the call-up, Israelis stand ready to defend their nation. They risk their lives for an idea.

The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Though founded less than 150 years ago, the Zionist movement sprung from a 4,000-year-long bond between the Jewish people and its historic homeland, an attachment sustained throughout 20 centuries of exile. This is why Zionism achieved its goals and remains relevant and rigorous today. It is why citizens of Israel—the state that Zionism created—willingly take up arms. They believe their idea is worth fighting for.

Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. "All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!" declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark. "Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Zionists are not under any circumstances," warned a sign in the window of a Belgian cafe. A Jewish demonstrator in Iceland was accosted and told, "You Zionist pig, I'm going to behead you."

In certain academic and media circles, Zionism is synonymous with colonialism and imperialism. Critics on the radical right and left have likened it to racism or, worse, Nazism. And that is in the West. In the Middle East, Zionism is the ultimate abomination—the product of a Holocaust that many in the region deny ever happened while maintaining nevertheless that the Zionists deserved it.

What is it about Zionism that elicits such loathing? After all, the longing of a dispersed people for a state of their own cannot possibly be so repugnant, especially after that people endured centuries of massacres and expulsions, culminating in history's largest mass murder. Perhaps revulsion toward Zionism stems from its unusual blend of national identity, religion and loyalty to a land. Japan offers the closest parallel, but despite its rapacious past, Japanese nationalism doesn't evoke the abhorrence aroused by Zionism.

Clearly anti-Semitism, of both the European and Muslim varieties, plays a role. Cabals, money grubbing, plots to take over the world and murder babies—all the libels historically leveled at Jews are regularly hurled at Zionists. And like the anti-Semitic capitalists who saw all Jews as communists and the communists who painted capitalism as inherently Jewish, the opponents of Zionism portray it as the abominable Other.

But not all of Zionism's critics are bigoted, and not a few of them are Jewish. For a growing number of progressive Jews, Zionism is too militantly nationalist, while for many ultra-Orthodox Jews, the movement is insufficiently pious—even heretical. How can an idea so universally reviled retain its legitimacy, much less lay claim to success?

The answer is simple: Zionism worked. The chances were infinitesimal that a scattered national group could be assembled from some 70 countries into a sliver-sized territory shorn of resources and rich in adversaries and somehow survive, much less prosper. The odds that those immigrants would forge a national identity capable of producing a vibrant literature, pace-setting arts and six of the world's leading universities approximated zero.

Elsewhere in the world, indigenous languages are dying out, forests are being decimated, and the populations of industrialized nations are plummeting. Yet Zionism revived the Hebrew language, which is now more widely spoken than Danish and Finnish and will soon surpass Swedish. Zionist organizations planted hundreds of forests, enabling the land of Israel to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the end of the 19th. And the family values that Zionism fostered have produced the fastest natural growth rate in the modernized world and history's largest Jewish community. The average secular couple in Israel has at least three children, each a reaffirmation of confidence in Zionism's future.

Indeed, by just about any international criteria, Israel is not only successful but flourishing. The population is annually rated among the happiest, healthiest and most educated in the world. Life expectancy in Israel, reflecting its superb universal health-care system, significantly exceeds America's and that of most European countries. Unemployment is low, the economy robust. A global leader in innovation, Israel is home to R&D centers of some 300 high-tech companies, including Apple, Intel and Motorola. The beaches are teeming, the rock music is awesome, and the food is off the Zagat charts.

The democratic ideals integral to Zionist thought have withstood pressures that have precipitated coups and revolutions in numerous other nations. Today, Israel is one of the few states—along with Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.—that has never known a second of nondemocratic governance.

These accomplishments would be sufficiently astonishing if attained in North America or Northern Europe. But Zionism has prospered in the supremely inhospitable—indeed, lethal—environment of the Middle East. Two hours' drive east of the bustling nightclubs of Tel Aviv—less than the distance between New York and Philadelphia—is Jordan, home to more than a half million refugees from Syria's civil war. Traveling north from Tel Aviv for four hours would bring that driver to war-ravaged Damascus or, heading east, to the carnage in western Iraq. Turning south, in the time it takes to reach San Francisco from Los Angeles, the traveler would find himself in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

In a region reeling with ethnic strife and religious bloodshed, Zionism has engendered a multiethnic, multiracial and religiously diverse society. Arabs serve in the Israel Defense Forces, in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. While Christian communities of the Middle East are steadily eradicated, Israel's continues to grow. Israeli Arab Christians are, in fact, on average better educated and more affluent than Israeli Jews.

In view of these monumental achievements, one might think that Zionism would be admired rather than deplored. But Zionism stands accused of thwarting the national aspirations of Palestine's indigenous inhabitants, of oppressing and dispossessing them.

Never mind that the Jews were natives of the land—its Arabic place names reveal Hebrew palimpsests—millennia before the Palestinians or the rise of Palestinian nationalism. Never mind that in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, the Palestinians received offers to divide the land and rejected them, usually with violence. And never mind that the majority of Zionism's adherents today still stand ready to share their patrimony in return for recognition of Jewish statehood and peace.

The response to date has been, at best, a refusal to remain at the negotiating table or, at worst, war. But Israelis refuse to relinquish the hope of resuming negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. To live in peace and security with our Palestinian neighbors remains the Zionist dream.

Still, for all of its triumphs, its resilience and openness to peace, Zionism fell short of some of its original goals. The agrarian, egalitarian society created by Zionist pioneers has been replaced by a dynamic, largely capitalist economy with yawning gaps between rich and poor. Mostly secular at its inception, Zionism has also spawned a rapidly expanding religious sector, some elements of which eschew the Jewish state.

About a fifth of Israel's population is non-Jewish, and though some communities (such as the Druse) are intensely patriotic and often serve in the army, others are much less so, and some even call for Israel's dissolution. And there is the issue of Judea and Samaria—what most of the world calls the West Bank—an area twice used to launch wars of national destruction against Israel but which, since its capture in 1967, has proved painfully divisive.

Many Zionists insist that these territories represent the cradle of Jewish civilization and must, by right, be settled. But others warn that continued rule over the West Bank's Palestinian population erodes Israel's moral foundation and will eventually force it to choose between being Jewish and remaining democratic.

Yet the most searing of Zionism's unfulfilled visions was that of a state in which Jews could be free from the fear of annihilation. The army imagined by Theodor Herzl, Zionism's founding father, marched in parades and saluted flag-waving crowds. The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, with no time for marching, much less saluting, has remained in active combat mode since its founding in 1948. With the exception of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological forbear of today's Likud Party, none of Zionism's early thinkers anticipated circumstances in which Jews would be permanently at arms. Few envisaged a state that would face multiple existential threats on a daily basis just because it is Jewish.

Confronted with such monumental threats, Israelis might be expected to flee abroad and prospective immigrants discouraged. But Israel has one of the lower emigration rates among developed countries while Jews continue to make aliyah—literally, in Hebrew, "to ascend"—to Israel. Surveys show that Israelis remain stubbornly optimistic about their country's future. And Jews keep on arriving, especially from Europe, where their security is swiftly eroding. Last week, thousands of Parisians went on an anti-Semitic rant, looting Jewish shops and attempting to ransack synagogues.

American Jews face no comparable threat, and yet numbers of them continue to make aliyah. They come not in search of refuge but to take up the Zionist challenge—to be, as the Israeli national anthem pledges, "a free people in our land, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem." American Jews have held every high office, from prime minister to Supreme Court chief justice to head of Israel's equivalent of the Fed, and are disproportionately prominent in Israel's civil society.

Hundreds of young Americans serve as "Lone Soldiers," without families in the country, and volunteer for front-line combat units. One of them, Max Steinberg from Los Angeles, fell in the first days of the current Gaza fighting. His funeral, on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, was attended by 30,000 people, most of them strangers, who came out of respect for this intrepid and selfless Zionist.

I also paid my respects to Max, whose Zionist journey was much like mine. After working on a kibbutz—a communal farm—I made aliyah and trained as a paratrooper. I participated in several wars, and my children have served as well, sometimes in battle. Our family has taken shelter from Iraqi Scuds and Hamas M-75s, and a suicide bomber killed one of our closest relatives.

Despite these trials, my Zionist life has been immensely fulfilling. And the reason wasn't Zionism's successes—not the Nobel Prizes gleaned by Israeli scholars, not the Israeli cures for chronic diseases or the breakthroughs in alternative energy. The reason—paradoxically, perhaps—was Zionism's failures.

Failure is the price of sovereignty. Statehood means making hard and often agonizing choices—whether to attack Hamas in Palestinian neighborhoods, for example, or to suffer rocket strikes on our own territory. It requires reconciling our desire to be enlightened with our longing to remain alive. Most onerously, sovereignty involves assuming responsibility. Zionism, in my definition, means Jewish responsibility. It means taking responsibility for our infrastructure, our defense, our society and the soul of our state. It is easy to claim responsibility for victories; setbacks are far harder to embrace.

But that is precisely the lure of Zionism. Growing up in America, I felt grateful to be born in a time when Jews could assume sovereign responsibilities. Statehood is messy, but I regarded that mess as a blessing denied to my forefathers for 2,000 years. I still feel privileged today, even as Israel grapples with circumstances that are at once perilous, painful and unjust. Fighting terrorists who shoot at us from behind their own children, our children in uniform continue to be killed and wounded while much of the world brands them as war criminals.

Zionism, nevertheless, will prevail. Deriving its energy from a people that refuses to disappear and its ethos from historically tested ideas, the Zionist project will thrive. We will be vilified, we will find ourselves increasingly alone, but we will defend the homes that Zionism inspired us to build.

The Israeli media have just reported the call-up of an additional 16,000 reservists. Even as I write, they too are mobilizing for active duty—aware of the dangers, grateful for the honor and ready to bear responsibility.

Mr. Oren was Israel's ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013. He holds the chair in international diplomacy at IDC Herzliya in Israel and is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. His books include "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" and "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present."

I think the Palestinians feel the same way the
Native Americans felt as the Europeans started to build settlements on
their land. Europeans called it "Manifest Destiny". But, the Native
Americans had a different view. Should the Europeans give back the land
they stole from the N.A.? Should Israel give back the land they
"stole" from the Palestinians? I don't think either is going to happen.

I think the Palestinians feel the same way the Native Americans felt as the Europeans started to build settlements on their land. Europeans called it "Manifest Destiny". But, the Native Americans had a different view. Should the Europeans give back the land they stole from the N.A.? Should Israel give back the land they "stole" from the Palestinians? I don't think either is going to happen.

Say What? Anti-Semites? Who, us anti-Zionists? US? We have nothing against Jews as such. We just hate Zionism and Zionists. We think Israel does not have a right to exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. Heavens to Mergatroyd. Marx Forbid. We are humanists. Progressives. Peace lovers.

Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism and Israeli policies. The two have nothing to do with one another. Venus and Mars. Night and Day. Trust us.

Sure, we think the only country on the earth that must be annihilated is Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. [..........]

Strange, no reference to the West Bank and the settlements put there by Israel. Strange, also, to say that, after all, the Jews were the natives of the land, long before the Palestinians. In that holiest of all books, the Bible, the Jews under Joshua, after Moses led the people out of Egypt, went in and conquered the residents living there in Canaan. Remember the walls of Jericho? Who were those people the forces of Joshua conquered, and, in some cases, annihilated?

the American and European propaganda machines are working overtime.The Jews are evil and the Palestinians are victims Children have been killed and this is man's inhumanity.No one wants women and children to be sacrificed in the line of battle but what Hollywood and this administration does not want to .admit is that the unfortunates are being used as human shields and it becomes difficult in defending one self to differentiate who is the true enemy.But Oren has made a salient point .Many times the Palestinians were offered opportunityto divide the land in return for allowing the Jews to live in peace.they refused each time.Yet again its the presence of the tunnels that should stick in our craw.If you heard living there that your home could be invaded in the dark of night and your family slaughtered could you be that objective of the fate of the Palestinians.

Let's face it, Israel and its so called Zionism, are built on hate and greed. Greed for the land that the Palestinians now occupy and hate for all of the arabs in the Middle East. One day, the bully(Israel) will topple, just as all bullies fall and Mr Netanyahu will end up the same way Saddam Hussein and Libya's Gadafy did.

"Zionism, nevertheless, will prevail. Deriving its energy from a people that refuses to disappear and its ethos from historically tested ideas, the Zionist project will thrive. We will be vilified, we will find ourselves increasingly alone, but we will defend the homes that Zionism inspired us to build."

Sure, as long as that success comes at the expense of Palestinian children and their land, no one will really care.

Do all you guys really thing your going to change anyone's mind with these comments? Has anything ever been solved by telling it like it is? I am very pro Israel and no one could change my mind and I doubt I could change the mind of anyone who hates Israel or Jews. If we can accept that maybe somewhere we can all live in peace

The question isn't "What gives Zion the right to exist" but rather, "What gives ANY country to right to exist?" There is no rule book, no set of laws, no justification, needed other than fighting for land and winning.

Seems like the rule has always been that people fight for land and then claim ownership or at least temporary occupancy until the next invader shows up. While it's unpleasant to think about, isn't that just the way of the world? There's no end in sight as far as this outsider can see...

@JOSEPH GRECO Joe, you can try to paint over the atrocities that Isael is committing in Gaza, but the constant bloodshed we are witnessing on our TV screens doesn't lie. Israel is committing war crimes and hopefully, they will face a court of justice some day in the future.

@barbara marcus But there is truth and there is fiction. When I was growing up I read the books that were put out to support Zionism. I read Exodus by Leon Uris. I watched The Diary of Anne Frank. For most of my life I agreed with these portraits. However, we are all capable of learning and deciphering fact from fiction. The more I read the more I realized much of what I learned was not true. Miko Peled eloquently talks about this. So does his sister, Nurit Peled-Elhanan. The New Historians talk about the truth. Most Israeli supporters refuse to even consider an alternative view. But I am hopeful because I see many young Israelis standing up to Zionism, not accepting the official version, unwilling to persecute the Palestinians, who just happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time. My heart goes out to these people. They are good people, just like the majority of Jews.

@Sriram Rajagopal Finally a voice of reason. All nations are born in blood, some more, some less. The formation of Israel,at least, did not involve the invasion of one state by another. There was no Palestine as such, the land area was a British manadate. To be sure, there were non-Jewish residents in what is now Israel (600,000 - 700,000). Some left, some were expelled. and some chose to stay. That is why there are 1 million Israeli Arabs today. Israel was able to form a state via the UN partition (in 1948 I think). The Arabs didn't like it. They were not politically effective enough to push things in the direction they pleased. They have been trying to make up for this historical ineffectiveness with terrorism. This is one Zionists's view.

@Sriram Rajagopal There are different ways to conquer land. When Americans set foot in East Coast, they decided to exterminate the Native Americans and grab all the land for themselves. When Russia was moving East, they started living peacefully together with all native nations that populated Siberia and Far East, and eventually they all assimilated and became Russian. First is a genocide and a crime against humanity, the second is a process for everyone to live peacefully together and learn from each other.

@Gregory Lorenz@JOSEPH GRECO No matter how many times you throw in bad words such as "atrocities", "bloodshed" or "war crimes", that will not make it true. When American and British forces were taking Falujah, 900 civilians died in one day. Is that a "war crime"? When the British bombed Dresden, 90,000 civilians died in one day. Is that also a "war crime"?

I can, however, direct you to some war crimes, all across the periphery of Islam. Please direct your attention to Syria (gas attacks, beheadings, 20,000 people who have just disappeared), Sudan (estimated at hundreds of thousands of people put to the sword), Iraq (murders, forced conversions, bombings), Nigeria (kidnapping 250 little girls, butchering entire villages) and the list goes on.

The only "crime" Israel has committed is that Jews are the ones holding the guns.

Really? Where is the "air raid" siren system to alert innocents in Gaza? Where is the underground concrete bunkers to protect innocents in Gaza? The atrocity is that Palestinians don't care about the lives of innocents! None!

In Israel, the Military are exploited to protect the Innocents. In Gaza, the Innocents are exploited to protect the Military! That, simply, is the real atrocity!

And for as "intelligent" as he wishes to present himself to be, he never figures out how much his own actions demonstrate the exact opposite. Never interested in debating the topic, just belittling other people, telling or implying that those with whom his disagrees are "stupid" or "uneducated" about the topic, and running away from those who prove his propaganda is bunk.

@Mac Moore@Gregory Lorenz@JOSEPH GRECO What you say Mac sounds like "I've just went out to the cinema with my rifle - how stupid are those people, no bulletproof vests, no machine guns! I've killed them all and they didn't bother fighting! If they were as smart as I am, they would all be alive"

"Apartheid"? Really? So, Hamas is an arm of Israel? I know of no understanding that Palestinians are a part of nor subject to Israel law. Do you even know what the term means?

A better relationship would be Cuba to USA. Although, Cuba has never sworn to kill all Americans (as the Palestinian Gov't has promised), Cuba is "controlled" by America to keep them from making the effort, just the same. Outside of that, they are fee to do as they please, just like Palestinians.

From the guy who references Chomsky, we get more youtube references. I always find it funny that pro-terrorist propagandists overwhelmingly cite YouTube as their source of "authoritarian" appeal. The same site that has talking cats and Harlem Shake videos is to be our new reference library.

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